THE NEW SCHAFP-HERZOG
lowly appearance, under which men must find the bread of heaven and of life. The image of eating and drinking represents the faith which lives by the humility of Jesus. Even verses 51 sqq. go no further than this, but declare that his humiliation must terminate in his death, and that men must accept him as he is, in flesh and blood, in order to live by him. The thought of a sacrifice does not appear. All this is merely symbolic. The institution of the Lord's Supper is entirely different. Here he acts, not merely talks. To be sure, both speech and action are primarily symbolical, but what he symbolizes is the sacrifice then approaching completion, and the appropriation by man of the benefits of that sacrifice. The symbol is but the means by which he gives them what he means to give them. He, who is about to offer himself in sacrifice, gives himself not only for but to his disciples for their own, in a way in which he has never before given himself to them. The last barrier which has separated them is removed. He has reached his goal; the old is past. He is, not only is about to be, the sacrifice; the few hours that intervene before the crucifixion do not count. The sacrifice is prepared— such a sacrifice as has never before been offered, and one in which they are to take part as none have ever taken part in any previous sacrifice. As their act of eating and drinking is both the symbol and the putting into operation of the faith by which they accept him, so his gifts are both the symbol and the realization of his utter self-devotion for them and to them. The distinction between these two latter aspects is that between the provision of salvation and its appropriation; and the appropriation takes place now. When they see the sacrifice offered, they can now say to themselves that it is theirs, that they have part in it. Thus the institution of the Lord's Supper is the extension of the line which passes through the language of John vi. about the eating and drinking of his flesh and blood. The gift of himself, as a sacrifice, for us and to us is the completion of his appearance in flesh and blood. The eating and drinking of his gifts in the Supper is the highest point of the eating and drinking mentioned in John vi.; and this may account for the fact that John's Gospel does not describe the institution. On this fact, then, that Jesus (as the new covenant requires) does not merely symbolize but gives what he symbolizes, rests the understanding of the words which he used, and the conception of the sacrament as an institution destined for all who accept the new covenant. Accordingly, wherever the Lord's Supper is celebrated after his institution, he gives himself in the manner in which he symbolizes his gift; symbol and reality are joined; he is present exactly as he said, as he symbolized, and as he accomplished — no otherwise and no less. There can be no question of the imparting of higher powers of life, as they are found in him, nor of nourishment for the resurrection body; but there is the sacrifice for the remission of sins, which he is for us, and which is ours.
The question remains how to understand the communion with Christ effected by the Lord's Supper, in what way the sacramental union with him
takes place in it. Of course, if Christ is no more than any other man, distinguished from the rest of humanity only by his mission and his 5. Signifi- work, there can be no question of a cance for partaking of his body and blood, and Humanity, the conception of the thing which appears in all the accounts falls to the ground. The occurrences of that night must have been different, must mean something different, from what these accounts imply. The New-Testament view of the institution is indissolubly bound up with the New-Testament conception of the person of Christ expressed in the New Testament, proclaimed by the apostles, and received by the primitive Church. By entering human life and the human mode of existence, he has so completely incorporated himself with man that he is what he is to man through his human nature. As through and in this nature, in inseparable union with mankind, he became a sacrifice for us, so he continues to make us partakers of him under this same aspect of sacrifice. This is the meaning of his bodily presence in the Lord's Supper. In this gift of himself is concentrated all that he is and forever means to be to mankind in perpetual union. We can have him, we are meant to have him, for our own, as we can have no one else. It is no new relation into which he enters. That which he is for man, and (by virtue of his community of blood) with man, finds in this sacrament its highest expression, as the reception of the sacrament is the highest expression of the faith by which we accept him. And so the Lord's Supper, although, or rather because, it is the memorial of his death, is no mysterium tremendum, but something to be received, as the first Christians received it (Acts ii. 46), " in gladness." (H. Cremer1\)
II. The Church Doctrine (the teaching of the Fathers and the Early Church, the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Churches of the Reformation. See also the articles Mass and Transubstantiation).
1. In the East: Precisely because the New- Testament exegesis of the past did not succeed in giving a decisive answer to the questions which have made the love-feast of the primitive Church a battle-ground for contending creeds, a constant appeal to history has entered into the 1." Difl*cul_ controversy. Early in the discussions Problem ° °* *^e sixteentn century, (Ecolampadius appealed to the vetustissimi auctores, and in 1527 Luther found himself involved in a learned discussion with him on passages in Augustine, Tertullian, Irenaus, Hilary, and Cyprian. And so, in more recent times, the various beliefs of the opposing religious bodies have been found by their adherents mirrored in the history of eucharistic doctrine. Ponderous treatises have been written to prove that the Roman Catholic, or the Lutheran, or the Zwinglian view is that of antiquity; but they have not been fruitful in conversions. This lack of result is scarcely surprising, for little is really to be learned of the sense of the original institution from the history of the doctrine. The student finds too soon misconceptions and perversions, which are the result of non-Chris-